


Swept Away, I'm Stolen

by lizimajig



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Fic Exchange, Insanity, Introspection, Leo Fitz is a good person pass it on, Mindfuck, What Have I Done, are we human or are we dancer, or what he thinks might be madness, slow descent into madness, song lyrics for a title because I RULE, why oh why did i write in the present progressive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-14
Updated: 2017-08-14
Packaged: 2018-12-15 03:23:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11797389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizimajig/pseuds/lizimajig
Summary: A series of conversations. Who is the woman in his dream, and why has she shown up to create trouble for Leopold Fitz and his partner? How does he know Agent Skye is not who she says? Why does he have memories of a mother his father has done his best to separate him from? Is he losing his mind?Or, sometimes, love is enough.





	Swept Away, I'm Stolen

**Author's Note:**

> This is for [Shayne](https://aosfangirl81.tumblr.com/) for [AOSFicNet 2.0](http://aosficnet2.tumblr.com/)'s Summer Exchange. THANK YOU for your endless patience in waiting for me to finish and post. The prompt that piqued my interest and drove me was "Canon divergent Framework where Jemma somehow gets through to Fitz." I hope it was worth the wait!
> 
> Since this is canon compliant to a certain point, there is the relationship for Fitz/Ophelia (AIDA), and Alistair Fitz plays a fairly prominent role, and there's flashbacks and description of him being an abusive #%$! to Fitz. There's also some violence. Nothing too descriptive and nothing that I wouldn't think they'd put on the show, but I, of course, want to warn for these sorts of things anyway.

_This is the end_  
_Hold your breath and count to ten_  
_Feel the earth move and then_  
_Hear my heart burst again_  
_For this is the end_  
_I’ve drowned and dreamt this moment_  
_So overdue I owe them_  
**_Swept away, I’m stolen_**  


"Skyfall" by Adele and Paul Epworth

\---

Sometimes he dreams about another woman. Not as a nebulous concept, just any old not-Ophelia woman. It's always the same woman, with a soft English accent and gentle hands, a beautiful smile, and brown eyes that make his stomach flip.

She's gorgeous, no question, but there is something strange about her. Not just that she calls him "Fitz." No one has seriously called him that since his school days, and even then it was always the nasty bullies who had more brawn than brain, jealous of his ability and potential. It was short and irritating, the fricative beginning and buzzing end separated by a single vowel, harsher than the much smoother "Leo," or its more refined elongated form, "Leopold," his given name.

From her, it's friendly. Soft. He thinks he might not mind it coming from her.

The feeling that he knows her is inescapable, and maybe more to the point, that she knows him. She looks at him like she sees everything that he is and doesn't mind what she sees.

Only one other woman -- person, even -- has ever looked at him that way, and she's there when he wakes from the nightmare that follows -- the blind sensation of drowning, a pain in his arm that's nothing to the pain in his heart, her arms around his neck and strong, lithe fingers on his face as she showers him with kisses and tears. But Ophelia's there, to pull him out, like she always has.

Well -- not always. When she was gone -- _taken_ \-- there had been no one to pull him out except himself, on the rare occasions he slept well enough to dream. But she's there now. 

"Leopold -- shh, Leo, it's just a nightmare --"

He finally breaks the surface between sleeping and waking. He gasps for air and is drenched in sweat, wet enough that he may well have been drowning in some god-forsaken sea. Pushing and kicking the covers off, he relishes the cold air on his skin. For a moment, the only sound is the air conditioning gently blowing and Ophelia's murmuring at his back. A breath leaves his body, taking tension with it, and her hand comes to rest on his arm. "The same one?"

The fact that she knows makes him edgy, and he strips off the damp t-shirt that clings to him like a vine. "Yes."

She moves to sit next to him, but doesn't lean into him -- nor he into her. It's not lack of care. All he ever wants is to be with her; days, nights, she is what gives life color and the best reason for him to do anything. She plans, he executes, the world is safe. "Some women might get jealous when their boyfriend's dreaming about someone else," he says, wiping his face and neck with the cotton t-shirt. 

It's a rare show of humor, and it doesn't make Ophelia laugh, but she does smile. She doesn't laugh much anymore. "Some women aren't lucky enough to have men like you."

He's still flushed with adrenaline, but a blush of pleasure starts in his cheeks. "If that's the word you want to use." The dream is fading quickly; he looks over his shoulder, behind them. The lamp is on, and there's a tablet on the table, next to the clock that just turns over to show nearly half two. "Not been to sleep yet?"

Ophelia sighs, avoiding his glance. He's plagued by a strange dream, but sleep eludes her since her return to this side. "I was just checking on some things. I was headed to sleep in a minute, I promise."

Fitz drops the shirt to the floor, taking her hands in his still clammy ones. "You have to rest," he tells her. "You're not a robot." Ophelia freezes, and he pauses immediately. "What?" Since she returned, he's never sure what might trigger a memory she'd rather forget.

There's a beat before she smiles thinly. "Nothing," she replies, and he doesn't press for more detail. "Good thing I wasn't. You'd feel guilty for waking me up with all that fuss."

"Mphm," is his own noise of assent. That's certainly a conversation they'd had many nights. No matter how many times she tells him it's not a bother, he knows it is. 

His heart had slowed back to normal, but it jumps a little when she lifts her hand up to brush his cheek. "I'll sleep, you'll sleep?"

He exhales, something still nagging at him, niggling at the back of his brain; something he couldn't quite pluck out and banish. "Deal."

\---

It had been a hell of a couple of days, and Fitz thinks it's sure to get worse before it gets better. He leaves the lab momentarily, back upstairs to Ophelia's office. She isn't present when he arrives, which is all the better. It will give him time to gather his words and pinpoint what it is exactly he wants to say. 

There was no reason he should have recognized a mere subversive. All the known SHIELD assets were careful to stay off the radar, and any ones that showed their faces could be apprehended in a matter of hours. She'd been reluctant to show him her face, and he isn't entirely sure why. He's reasonably sure the woman isn't famous, or anything of the kind -- not that he'd know, he's entirely far too busy to pay attention to such things, but it doesn't hit him until hours later, when he's put a team on finding her. When it does, it's like being hit by a truck.

Jemma Simmons is the woman in his dreams.

Fitz doesn't believe in drivel like precognition -- and he's not an Inhuman, potential or otherwise, so this wouldn't be some manifestation of powers. The most he'll allow is that the human brain is marvelously complex, and even though the science is forever striding forward, there's still plenty that people don't know about what goes on in their own heads. 

Dreams in particular are a strange thing; no one is quite sure why people dream. But they do know that the mind does not invent faces out of thin air. 

He puts Ophelia's password into her computer, and pauses as the cursor blinks, mocking him. Then, in a rush, before he can talk himself out of it, puts _Simmons, Jemma_ into the search field. 

When her file comes up, he reads, unsure and maybe even dreading what he might find. From Sheffield, a faculty member of the Academy, deceased in the "lab accident." So she'd been killed when Hydra took over, and probably now occupied one of the mass graves that recalcitrant SHIELD agents had been thrown into once they'd been taken care of. 

The good news was that it wasn't unreasonable that they might have met, sometime in the distant past, even in passing. They were of an age, they might have even had overlapping time at the Academy. The bad news is that she was supposed to be dead -- _long_ dead. In looking for an answer, he'd only found another question. Normally, that excites him, but today, in this particular instance, he finds it irksome. 

"Leopold?" He glances up, to see Ophelia on the other side of the desk. His time was up. "What's wrong?"

He turns the monitor to face her, saving himself the explanation of what he was doing. "Turns out your new subversive was executed at the Academy. But I suppose you knew that already, didn't you?" He hadn't meant for it to be quite such an accusation, but frustration is rising up in him, unbidden and unwelcome. 

"I can explain."

Ophelia moves to come around behind the desk next to him, but he counters, keeping the distance between them. "So she's an Inhuman then." That might explain some things, but loans itself more readily to more questions. "What else have you been keeping from me?"

Her jaw sets in that determined way she has, and she turns the monitor back to face him. "This woman is not from here. She crossed over, from the other side."

He hadn't been expecting that. Not much will put dread in him anymore, but that does. "I thought that as impossible," he replies, a bit numbly.

"As did I." 

Ophelia, as ever, has been methodical and calculating. "So this is why you've been so keen on finishing Project Looking Glass."

"The people from that world want to destroy what we've built. I was only trying to protect you," she tells him, firm and authoritative. 

She's _so cold_ and matter of fact. It should blow his flaring anger right out like a January wind putting out a match, but it has the opposite effect. He may be angry -- he may be frightened of the possibility of one of _them_ crossing over, reaching her, taking her away from him, when he'd promised, never again. Hell or high water, they were not going to be separated again, ever. "You never talk about your time there." He slams his hand down on the desk; even as he does so he hears his father's voice in his head, warning against showing his temper and therefore his weakness. He pushes Alistair Fitz to the back of his mind. "Why? Tell me the truth. You owe me that much." 

She leans in, matching him for intensity. "Over there, the worst thing happened. SHIELD won the war, Hydra lost." She softens slightly, and he feels the awful truth before she speaks it. "I was their slave. Treated as less than human. When I escaped, I hoped they couldn't follow me, but--"

"Here they are." He feels sick. His fingertips tremble, and he should be furious. He thinks he might be -- but it's not because he's imagining what sort of humiliation and terror that entails.

"If I can't return there and defeat my enemies, we'll never be safe." She comes around the corner, closer to him. He wants to reach for her, but he's frozen. "Everything I do is so that you and I can be together."

No one ever sees her like this, except him, and even so, never at the Triskelion, where they are Madame Hydra and the Doctor, running the whole of Hydra with iron-fisted wisdom. Vulnerability is weakness, and weakness is unacceptable. Like him, she knows that hard decisions must be made, without emotion or sentiment clouding judgment. And like him, she lets it rule her decisions and puts him before all others. But they're only human, and she's the most precious of those to him. Isn't she? 

Her phone beeps, breaking the spell of the moment. Ophelia reads the message, and any softness leaves her. Her sharp edges come back, and she's Madame once more. "We'll finish this later. Come." 

Her heels _click click_ on her way out, but he doesn't immediately follow. He looks back at the monitor, where Jemma Simmons's photo still smiles back at him. Fear surges in him -- no, not fear, something worse. Uncertainty. He came looking for answers, but found none, and he's left a confused mixture of he-doesn't-even-know-what. 

Ophelia's been through a terrible ordeal. He knows her, and she knows him. They've built this world, and have only been able to do that because they had one another.

But he still can't shake the feeling that Jemma Simmons stirs in him. As though she's a memory he'd buried deep in order to forget, like his mother's voice or the fact that capuchin monkeys can live for fifty years in captivity, so that lessons like _quiet hands_ and _cut off one head, and two more will take its place_ and _I do this because I love you and want you to be a great man, Leopold, and great men understand respect and discipline_ could take hold. What does she know, and what does she have to do with him? Why is she in his dreams, and why does she look at him like he's the world?

He feels like he does when he's drowning in the dream; unable to breathe, but if his last breath is spent looking at her, then all will be well.

His own phone beeps in his pocket, and he knows without looking that it's Ophelia. He backs away from the desk as though he's been burned, and stalks toward the lift without looking back. Dreams are just that, and like everything else, the only meaning they have are the one that you yourself assign to them.

\---

Dr. Radcliffe gives him the most madcap stories he's ever heard; treating him like a son, football matches, and pints consumed together. Fitz has never met the man in his life, but he spins tales that Fitz almost believes. He even thinks Radcliffe believes them. 

But he also thinks the older man would say whatever Fitz wanted him to, so long as he has the gun trained on the woman they found, the woman who could be Ophelia's twin -- someone important. 

Why he thinks that's what Fitz wants to hear, he couldn't say. "That's absurd."

"It's the truth, my boy!" Radcliffe is fairly pleading for Fitz's understanding. "You even helped me build AIDA."

"Enough!" Ophelia barks. "We're done here."

He should walk away. Take the professor and this woman, find out what they know, and let their men handle the subversives who were hiding on the island like rats in the bilge of a ship. "Then why don't I remember you?" he asks, ignoring Ophelia's order, unmoving.

"Because it all happened in the other world."

"It wasn't you, Fitz, it was _their_ world's version of you!"

If it were just the two of them and not a gross undermining of Ophelia's authority in front of their accompanying team, he would have told her to be quiet. He can't dismiss out of hand the idea that this man knows something, despite his babbling. "And the woman," he starts, calmly on the outside and chaos on the inside, "Jemma Simmons?" He hasn't said her name out loud. It's like a song, and something deep in him thrums in accompaniment, like the strings on a guitar.

"Simmons." Radcliffe smiles -- he knows the song, too. "You two were in love. Unbreakable, a force to be reckoned with. The Fitz I knew nearly drowned for Jemma. He crossed the bloody universe to rescue her!" 

Fitz barely hears anything he says after 'drowned' -- how could he know? How could he possibly know? Unless they'd managed to toy with him from the other side -- which, frankly, didn't seem so farfetched as to be unlikely.

There's so much swirling in his brain, and people yelling -- Ophelia, Radcliffe, competing for his attention and trust. Even the short, frightened breaths from Agnes are too much, and they only quicken when his hands begin to clench, coming another fraction of an inch to squeezing the trigger. "Stop!" he shouts over them, and clenches his teeth. 

They all fall silent, the only sound now being the breeze in the trees. He has questions, but he can't formulate any of them to ask. "The world has changed, but you're not this man," Radcliffe continues, more gently, in a tone that reminds him of his mother, strangely. Words softly said, to facilitate avoidance of a meltdown that had the tendency to follow frustration in his younger years, before he'd grown beyond that. "You're one of the good guys, you help people. Look inside. This isn't you."

He can't deny that there's a ringing of truth in what Radcliffe says. The more he listens, the more he is convinced that he's _not_ losing his mind. Drowning to save Jemma Simmons, on some unknowable level, makes complete and absolute sense to him. 

But he looks at Ophelia, and he questions what would ever possess him to think that. His best friend, his perfect match is standing in front of him -- isn't she? For a moment he wonders what he would think if it were Jemma Simmons standing there instead.

"You say that I'm not myself." His voice wavers, the only crack in his carefully constructed façade. "I don't know who I am." He lowers his voice. "Why would you say that?" _Why do I believe it?_

"It isn't your fault, any of it," Radcliffe says, and a look Fitz can only ascribe to guilt or regret settles on his face, making him seem much older than he had a moment ago. It's an apology, but not one given out of fear or followed by excuses like he's used to hearing. It's simply sad, and makes a silent admission for wrongdoings with no hope of redress or forgiveness.

 _He's the one who enslaved me._ He'd made Fitz -- even another version of himself -- culpable. His hand tenses on the gun. "You're wrong. I know exactly who I am."

He squeezes the trigger.

Time goes more slowly. The clone seems to take forever to fall, Radcliffe lunges forward like he could save her life by catching her before she hits the grass, and his ears ring from the volume of the gunshot. 

" _Fitz, no!_ "

His name cuts through the ringing, to capture his attention. He turns, and she's standing there, flesh and blood and bone and tears -- Jemma Simmons screams as though he'd shot her instead, and cries for his soul, not hers. Though he was shocked into stillness as the scene descended into chaos around them, the instinct to run to her -- to protect her -- was unmistakable, and strong.

"Sir, go!" Fitz doesn't realize it until one of the men of the tactical team urge him back towards the Zephyr, covering him amidst the bullets flying. He's not sure he would have noticed if he had been hit, he feels very removed from the situation, like this is one of the dreams where Jemma Simmons kisses his face, and he smiles even though he's going to die. Because she will live, and that will be enough.

He takes one of the jump seats for take off, and tries to concentrate on keeping his hands from shaking. He clenches his fists, letting his fingernails sink into the heels of his hands to ground him, here and now. This was real. This was home. This was real. Jemma Simmons was nothing to him but an insect, an annoyance. This was real.

_This has to be real._

\---

It's been a long night. 

While he and Ophelia had chased the subversives to the island and picked up Dr. Radcliffe, Agent May had found the mole -- or at least one of them. Fitz has no doubt that there are more, but they have Agent Skye, and it's only a matter of time until they apply the right pressure. Agent Ward was a likely collaborator as well; he would have to be found and brought in.

It was shaping up to be a long day.

They regard each other for a long moment, her from the floor and he standing across the room. "How did you do it?" he finally asks.

Skye looks up at him, bruised and battered. Not an unattractive woman, all things considered, but a bit more brash than Fitz would have considered for himself. Even so, this wasn't the _real_ Skye. "Do what?" Her voice is hoarse, and she really does look the worse for wear. Neither of them has slept, but he at least has the benefit of not having been under rigorous interrogation.

"I know you replaced the real Agent Skye." It was remarkable, too -- a closer likeness than twins. Perhaps she was a first step, a prototype of sorts, in replacing Ophelia with that woman they'd found on Radcliffe's island. "How did you do it?" he repeats.

She hesitates, eyes falling closed momentarily. That's fine, he can wait. Almost as though to make a point, he pulls the chair out from the table and sits across from her, casually as you please. "Look," she starts, "it's not a -- she's not tied up in a closet somewhere. This isn't real. We're all plugged in to the framework back in the real world; you, me, Jemma, _AIDA_ \--"

"Don't call her that," he snaps. 

"We came to save _you._ " Like Radcliffe, she's desperate for him to believe her. 

Like Radcliffe, she's going to be disappointed. 

"Don't trouble yourself about me. I'd be more concerned for your own well being." He doesn't sit forward in the chair, instead keeping a cold distance. He can't let her draw him in to the argument and control the interrogation. _He_ is in charge here. He is always in charge. "Tell me where the Patriot is."

"I don't know," she answers, with all the dullness of someone who is repeating something for the hundredth time. At least she's a consistent liar.

"Did he come from your world?"

" _We_ did," she retorts, looking him in the eye. The repeated implication was clear enough. He tenses, enough that she notices, and hastily adds, "It was AIDA. She took all of you--"

He reaches out and backhands her, quick as a snake striking, and just as swiftly he is back to his straight-backed position in the chair. "I told you not to call her that," he chides, as though she's a child in need of correction. "Tell me where he is." 

"She's changed you, Fitz." Skye is quiet and, dare he say it, defeated. "Is this all really because you didn't have Jemma?"

"It's _Doctor_ Fitz, if you must." Fury begins to simmer inside him. "I don't appreciate the implication that I might have anything to do with the subversive, Agent Johnson. In your world, some… _perversion_ of myself may be someone you think you know--" 

"What did you call me?" 

The question is so unexpected that for a moment, it throw him off kilter. He called her by name, but not her name. "Agent Skye."

The look on her face, the spark in her eye tells him that she knows just as well as he does that that wasn't what he said. "You said my name." She sounds amazed. "My _real_ name, Johnson. Daisy Johnson."

That name hits him with almost as much impact as "Jemma Simmons" had, though very differently. A sharp pain in his stomach that feels like abandonment, the sensation of hot tears on his neck and a tight embrace, _You're just different now, and there's nothing wrong with that,_ with the absolute certainty of two people in the same lifeboat who isn't going to let the other give up.

The split second of hesitation seems to be all the encouragement and confirmation she needs. "You _are_ remembering. Fitz, you have to believe me. This isn't real, it's -- it's a _computer program_ , made by AIDA. We have to get you all out of here--"

All the while, she's been cautiously moving forward, speaking in a low, soothing tone like one would to a frightened, caged animal. He breaks out of the deluge of half-remembered moments and pieces of conversations he's never had when she reaches for him, and reacts violently. He slaps her again, hard as he can, and pushes her onto her back, pinning her to the floor by her throat. Her head smacks into the concrete, and though he hasn't cut off her air completely, it's enough that she's going red under the grime and blood and is unable to speak beyond weakly choking out his name. 

"Her name is Ophelia," he hisses, "and _you_ are Skye, a traitor and Inhuman. This is _my_ home, and I'm going to see to it that every last one of your kind are crushed out of existence."

He releases her and retreats immediately, blowing out of the door like a backdraft. He doesn't bother to secure the door, the guard will see to that. It's more important that he get away from Daisy -- Skye, and regain his composure. Find his center again, and banish these new memories. He means to go to his lab, where at least he can control things and make them make sense. The lift closes, and he exhales one long, shaky breath. 

_You're the worst pretend girlfriend I've ever had._

\---

Fitz is being forced to seriously contemplate the idea that he is losing his mind. He should be working on Project Looking Glass, but instead he replays the moments in his mind, in startling detail -- detail that should not be present if they'd never happened, and yet he knows that they have not. How could they? He doesn't know Jemma Simmons, and she has been dead for years. So why are his feelings for her -- for that's what they are, he can no longer deny that much -- be so strong? Why would he ever hide Daisy -- Skye -- Agent Skye's Inhuman status? If she'd undergone terrigenesis, she would have powers, yet the test on file read that DNA segment remained unactivated. Could the test be wrong?

It wasn't a simple matter of a genetic test being wrong, either. He had to briefly consider that perhaps they were right.

His had come to no conclusion when his father approaches him for a security report, and probes a little further into Fitz's disturbed manner. He offers a brief escape from the lab, and tea. Fitz doubts he could stomach anything, even something so mild as a cuppa, but he does need air. The sterility and brightness of the lab is acting only as a canvas to project his insanity onto, and if nothing else, his father always told him the truth and would give him a much needed reality check. 

He beelines out of the Triskelion, down the stairs and outside, past the ones who stop to "Hail Hydra" at him. He senses that his father stops to return the salute, but he keeps moving, agents and personnel moving out of his path. He thought he might feel better outside, but passing through the doors and into the courtyard, breathing becomes no easier. 

He stops abruptly, thinking this was a mistake. Before he can turn and go back inside to the safety of four walls enclosing him, his father is at his side, a firm hand on his shoulder. "Son, you're going like the devil himself's after you. Now what on Earth is the matter?"

He'd suggested inside it was a woman, and Fitz very nearly laughed. It was a veritable _plague_ of women that troubled him, but not in the way his father meant. But, he's having trouble finding words to express the quandary he is experiencing. The feeling is too reminiscent of being a little boy again, frustrated that language is failing him again. _Stop whining. Find your words, boy._

"The woman. I had to kill her." The woman -- the clone -- Agnes -- flashes before him. Maybe the only completely innocent one in all this, he reflects.

His father is subtly leading him away from the doors and the open space, toward somewhere off in a corner, away from the comings and goings of the building, and those who might overhear. "Had to," he repeats. "You mean in self defense?"

He shakes his head. _Words, boy, you're not a dummy._ "She was unarmed," he says, with a calm he doesn't feel.

"An enemy of the state?"

He hesitates. "I -- I thought so. But it's not just her. The -- subversive --"

"The one who got jumped up to number two?" his father interrupts, "Jemma Simmons, is that her name?"

It most certainly is her name, and he can't say he cares for how he says it. "Ophelia says that she comes from the other world. And they managed to replace one of the agents, a woman named Dais-- Skye." He speaks in a rush, so rapidly that he can't stop the words from tumbling out. He barely knows what he's saying. "I don't know either of them, but I have all these -- these _memories_. I've dreamed about her -- Jemma -- long before I ever saw her. There are things I know about them, things we've--"

"Damn it, Leopold, make some sense." Alistair Fitz gives him a sharp shake, and it jars something loose. 

_Alistair, he's just a boy, for god's sake--_

_He's my boy, Ellie, and this has gone on long enough--_

_He's not hurting anyone!_

_He'll be at school in no time, and they're not going to put up with this nonsense--_

If his father notices anything unusual in the way he takes in a sharp breath or how he tenses under his hand, he doesn't remark on it. "What if they're right and this isn't reality?"

Alistair scoffs. "I'd be careful, son, you're sounding right mental."

"What other explanation is there for everything?" His voice rises, strident.

"Maybe they have gone and replaced you as well. I certainly didn't raise _my_ son to panic at every obstacle." Fitz doesn't answer -- can't answer. This tone isn't to be interrupted. "Listen to yourself, you sound like your mother."

His insides do that strange thing they do whenever his father says such a thing -- usually whenever he's being emotional, or experiencing especially deep moments of doubt. He'd long since quashed the part of him that wanted to jump to his mother's defense in her absence, because arguing never got him anywhere with Alistair Fitz. But it was reborn in him now, as another memory surges forward. Arms wrapped around him, tight and safe. 

_He's gone, Leo, love. But we still have each other, yeah?_ She's sad as she says it, but brave. The moment remembered _feels_ sad, but also relieved, and angry, and filled with the guilty questions he can't bring himself ask, like, _Why? Was it me? Did you tell him I'll try harder? That I'm sorry? Why is he gone?_ It's such a sharp contrast to the competing memory -- leaving, rather than being left, that he can't breathe. "Sorry, father," he says, unsure of what else to say, but knowing that apology won't be kindly received, either.

"There she is again," he admonishes Fitz. Again, he doesn't answer.

When Fitz was still a boy, this sort of derision was usually followed by a proper upbraiding, but there had eventually come a time when Alistair didn't have to say anything. Fitz had already heard it so many times that he could silently berate himself. A litany of complaints, ending with _I should have left you with your mother,_ which incited protest and promises. He never really thought Alistair would return him to his mother, a woman he hardly remembered and never heard any good about, but the threat remained. And why was it such a threat? Had he really convinced himself that he would be as big a disappointment to one parent as he was to the other?

The memories flooded in. A laugh spurred by his delighted glee in the monkey house at the zoo; snuggling up beside her on the couch until he was too big to fit; his full name being shouted in exasperation when he'd dismantled the toaster _again_ , proud tears when he accepted his degrees, and a brave smile when he left home for the Academy.

"Did you hear me, son?" Alistair shakes him again by the shoulder, snapping Fitz back to the present -- reality or not. "I don't know what's gotten into you, but it isn't like you. You're a great man, who knows how makes hard decisions when no one else can, and that means there are things you cannot afford for those who mean to hurt people. What can't you afford, son?" 

"The luxury of sympathy." He truly feels like he may vomit. Fitz shakes the hand off his shoulder, interrupting his father's further catechisms. "I have to go." 

Without further explanation he turns and goes back into the building. He blankly accepts and mimics the salutes he is given by deferential officers. His phone beeps and he looks -- Ophelia beckons, with a simple message: _Office_. He puts his clearance for the top floor into the lift. No, the luxury of sympathy is not a thing he can currently afford. And neither is insanity.

\---

Hell in a handcart was hardly the phrase.

He finishes Project Looking Glass, because Ophelia asks him to. Her body is broken now, spine as fragmented as his mind, but the machine can make her whole again, and give her what she needs to finish their enemies for good. 

"Will you come with me?" she asks, her hands holding on to his. 

If you can take the mind and put it in a new body, what is that except putting an old hard drive into a new chassis? All humans are is programming, electrical impulses and chemicals interacting with their environment -- what difference would it make?

He wants to say yes. He wants to say no. "I don't think I'm quite so easily fixed as a shattered spine," he says, voice soft and uncertain. 

Her face falls. "You're not broken, Leopold. You're perfect." 

If he says yes, maybe things will be fine. If he says yes, their enemies on the other side will be dealt with. With the Patriot dead, the resistance's morale will be crushed, and the rest shouldn't be too hard to find, now that they've hijacked network television and announced their presence and shown their faces -- another face that Fitz feels he knows.

If he says yes, Ophelia will have a new body and her beautiful mind, and once the danger is past they can rest easily and live together in safety.

If he says yes, Jemma Simmons dies.

"Get some rest," he tells her, heart painfully full. It is neither a yes nor a no. "Things will look better in the morning."

He thinks his mother used to say that.

\---

Fitz isn't just angry. Or irate. He is beyond any synonym one could come up with. He's deliriously furious -- mad really might be the proper terminology. Listening to his father be murdered over the phone may have driven him well and truly insane.

Seeing Jemma Simmons in the flesh is just as confusing as he remembered, and just as arresting. After hearing the gunshots and screaming into his phone for _one_ more word from his father, just _one_ , he fully intended to shoot her on sight, and let her die alone. Standing across the dark, empty room from her makes it a completely different prospect. "Jemma Simmons." 

He watches all the tension leaves her body, and -- she smiles? "Fitz--"

"No, stay there." He levels the gun a little more prominently at her, lest she fail to heed the warning. His name in her voice rings in his ears -- exasperated, joyful, quiet, screamed, laughing. "You don't get to use my name. Not after what you've done."

"It wasn't supposed to be like this." His heart aches to see her cry, but sympathy is out of the question now. He is a man who makes the hard decisions, and it is going to be very hard to kill her. "AIDA -- she took you from me, and I came to rescue you!"

"And so you what, murder people? My father? For what?" he shouts over her. Like the conflicting feelings of simultaneously wanting her dead at his feet and for no one to ever touch a hair on her head, there were clashing feelings concerning the death of Alistair Fitz. On one hand, it was a consuming grief that was overwhelming him, an undertow that would pull him in if he let it. And on the other, it was a void. A true chasm where nothing lived except indifference and -- if he looked closely enough -- relief. 

It disgusted him. He disgusted himself. What kind of son thinks that about his father?

It may repulse him, but there's nothing so perverse as seeing her grow tearful over it. "I am so sorry. It was an accident--"

"Nothing that you've done has been an accident!" he roars. "You want to destroy this world! You want to destroy the -- the --" 

_The woman I love._ The woman he loves is standing in front of him. Isn't she?

The hesitation is enough for her to get a foothold. "Daisy said that you were starting to remember." She's soft and hopeful, just like in the dream, and it's too much. He shuts his eyes against it. "What do you remember, Fitz?"

" _Shut up,_ " he grinds out through clenched teeth. 

"Do you remember the Academy?" She waits, as though he might engage with her. "I remember… that Saturday before our first finals. The end of that reading week? We were so burnt out. So we ordered Chinese and pizza because we couldn't decide which we wanted, and watched Star Trek until we fell asleep in my room. I remember being on the Bus," she said. "And the pod. Sitting by your bed for nine days while…" 

_They tried to determine whether I would live, and what kind of life it would be._ He chokes on a sob. She presses her lips together, keeping her own cry inside.

"And being trapped on Maveth. You never did give up on me." She didn't intend to give up on him, either, it seems. "And the hotel in Bucharest. Crossing the event horizon."

"Stop. Please." He is something truly broken now, crumbling and not bothering to hide it. He opens his eyes to look at her. He may as well have looked in the sun; he is dazzled. His arm falls of its own accord, and the gun falls to the ground as it slips out of his grip. Hot tears drip down his cheeks. "Jemma… what have I done?" 

The danger is past, and she runs to him, clinging tightly. If not for her holding on, he would be on the ground. His legs feel weak and the full weight of what has happened over the last several days -- really, long before that -- hits him.

Even if he feels like a sick, sad excuse of a human being, the relief in Jemma's body seeps into his, and he gingerly puts one arm around her back loosely. It's a familiar feeling, comforting him as much as her. She clears her throat, and speaks in a low tone. She's as reluctant to let go as he is. "Fitz, we have to leave. If we're still here when the framework collapses, we'll -- we'll be dead."

He presses his face into her neck. God, she even smells how he remembers. "You go."

" _Fitz,_ you're right here and I'm not leaving without you!"

"I've killed people, Jemma." He drops his arm and pulls back from her. He's never stopped to think about it before -- possibly because he never thought of them as people. "Lots of them. I killed Lincoln. I good as killed Mace -- _Agnes._ " God, he'd forgotten Radcliffe was even _there._

"Fitz…" She's crying again, as she tries to find the words to convince him.

"Facts don't lie, Jemma."

"Facts don't necessarily tell the whole truth, either!" she cries desperately. "AIDA's programming may or may not allow her to lie -- but she's been _deceiving_ you, and I won't let her take you from me. I won't!" 

"Better listen to her, my boy." Radcliffe speaks carefully, as though he may trip over the trigger that turns Fitz's framework programmed self back on. God, how can he even speak to him, let alone so gently? "You have a pretty stubborn lady there."

"I'm sorry," he bursts, nearly cutting Radcliffe off. "I -- Agnes, she -- was she--" It occurs to him he's not completely sure who Agnes really was to his friend. But when he's finally able to meet his eye, he knows. Radcliffe's bleak smile tells him everything he could need to know.

"It wasn't meant to last for either of us," he replies simply. "It was my fault -- all of this. This never should have been possible. Now go. Whenever you feel guilty -- just remember, and blame me. Yeah?"

Fitz is speechless. He feels like there should be something else to say, but he's coming up blank for something new and meaningful. So instead, he nods, and lets Jemma take his hand -- delicately, as though they were a pair of schoolchildren in their first blush of love, barely friends before taking that innocent but terrifying plunge. "I should tell you," she starts, "when you wake up, I won't be there. I'm on the Zephyr with Daisy and Elena -- but we'll be coming for you."

"Where am I?"

"This same location, actually. Just in the real world. And you won't be alone -- Coulson and May have already gone through; they'll be awake." The caveat "if everything has gone according to plan" remains unspoken. "They won't blame you. They've been through the same thing. They'll understand."

"They should blame me," he says miserably. He blames himself. 

"They won't." Her hand tightens around his in what he's sure is supposed to be a comforting gesture. It doesn't do much in the way of making him feel better. 

Daisy smiles when she sees the two of them on the platform, and Fitz's heart sinks to his feet once again -- he's wronged Daisy magnificently, and he'll have to reckon with that as well. "We're ready!" Jemma shouts across to her, and with the vibrations, she pushes the masking back to reveal the exit.

He's half-praying this won't work. That he won't come out the other side, and never have to reconcile his actions with the person he is -- or thought he was. His hand would be shaking if Jemma hadn't held it so tightly. "Together?" he asks, glancing over to her. 

He thinks briefly that he should kiss her, just in case it's the last time. But he doesn't want to look away, even that long. Her eyes are shining with unshed tears and love that he doesn't deserve. She looks exhausted -- but she's beautiful. 

"Always together," she replies, and he hears not only the affirmation but a promise. "I'll see you soon."

They jump.


End file.
